Ein Gedi Botanic Garden

Ein Gedi Botanic Garden
Seek the serenity of a Judean Desert sky in Autumn at the Ein Gedi Botanic Garden

Sunday, June 01, 2014

'Altered Consciousness'

June 1, 2014 - It’s a fine state of affairs when a grown woman reaches the stage that her own children begin to clamor for her to smoke marijuana, and worse when it is a tradition begun by her husband’s sly suggestions.

This began years ago with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia; an opportunity to be seized upon, one might believe, without a second’s thought. 

Medical marijuana had just been introduced to the market as a legitimate option for pain relief in the United States. Never one to let the grass grow under his feet (forgive the pun) my husband – an old hippie – immediately began researching the latest information on this new remedy.

Medical marijuana grown at home.  Photo: Courtesy Wikimedia Commons/rollorollo69

I wanted nothing to do with it, of course. I was raised in a pretty conservative blue collar working-class home in southern Connecticut and knew the last thing I needed as an adult was to learn how to inhale a blunt. I had already been there and done that in high school and failed miserably. Nightmares of holding smoke in my mouth while trying to look like I was having a good time rose up in my mind and every fiber of my being rebelled.

NO.

A relative who had a real reason to use this stuff, meanwhile, who actually ended up having to at least try it in pill form, was given a prescription – and hated it. That relative handed the rest of the “precious” material to us, and my husband was overjoyed. At last! Pain-free nights for his wife and smiles perhaps for him too?

No. Zero response after swallowing one in the morning – and overnight, the most psychotic nightmares I had experienced since my pregnancies. Forget it. 

“One more try?” Okay. One more, for G-d and my husband. But it ended the same, with a few bloodthirsty demons thrown in for good measure. I chucked the package at my husband and figured he could have them, and the matter was put to rest.

Until we came to the Holy Land, and my children grew into their teens. Now they, too, have become aware of the “benefits” of medical marijuana, and now they are picking up where their father left off. Having recounted the failure of pills to do the job, my 16-year-old son reassured me last week, “Aw, Ma, that stuff, no good. You need to use the REAL thing. You need to SMOKE it, or use it in cookies or brownies. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ma.”  (Nooooo. My B-12 injections -- courtesy of our genius Israeli family doctor, are doing fine, thank you. I am a happy camper.)

Visions of my husband and that doctor trying to teach me to suck in medication from an asthma inhaler when I had pneumonia still wander through my mind periodically. Both worked very hard, trying to 'remind' me of my high school years, hoping I could 'relearn' the skills needed to get the medication into my lungs. But no such luck. Comical as it was, the lesson still remains: 'inhaling' just wasn’t for me. Cigarettes or weed, legal or otherwise.

Are my kids disappointed?  You bet. Just like their father. Oh well. 

Perhaps they will be happier with the latest ICD diagnosis I recently happened to stumble upon in my travels:  ‘Consciousness Alterations.’  


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